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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26153986">my longing for the distant road</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/pseuds/quodthey'>quodthey</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Avatar: The Last Airbender</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Air Nomad Genocide (Avatar), Gen, Panic Attacks</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 12:22:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,000</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26153986</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/quodthey/pseuds/quodthey</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Aang and Hakoda think about the past, and we can never be rid of ghosts. </p><p> </p><p>  <i>Once upon a time: someone else used to stand at this window, at the narrow slit carved into stone. Maybe they watched the sky, the stars, the moon. Maybe they watched for people coming to them on bison, gliding through the cold clean air by kite. Aang stood where they had stood, bare feet wriggling in long faded footprints. </i></p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aang &amp; Hakoda (Avatar)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>41</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>167</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>my longing for the distant road</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/jerseydevious/gifts">jerseydevious</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>happy jersey day &lt;3 have some aang trauma fic! </p><p>title is from <a href="https://twitter.com/BigBadRedPanda/status/1295506081511362563/">this</a> translation of "Watering Horses at the Grotto near the Great Wall."</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“Stories about the Temple,” Sokka had said to Duke, not long ago and not knowing Aang was close, “should start with <i>Once upon a time</i>.” Because it was so long ago, he had meant. Aang hadn’t paid much mind to it at the time, aside from the little twinge in his chest that came up now and then when he thought about home, but he was thinking about it now, and he couldn’t stop thinking about it. That happened sometimes, too. </p><p>Once upon a time: someone else used to stand at this window, at the narrow slit carved into stone. Maybe they watched the sky, the stars, the moon. Maybe they watched for people coming to them on bison, gliding through the cold clean air by kite. Aang stood where they had stood, bare feet wriggling in long faded footprints. He didn’t know which ghost it was, whose space he was taking up: this had never been his Temple. Maybe Monk Gyatso knew them; maybe if he had listened more he would have known them; maybe if he had stayed he would have met them. </p><p>“Maybe if, maybe if, maybe if.” He tried not to say it, but it lived in his mouth, tucked away under his tongue like a sweet he wanted to keep. It circled around in his mind like an eagle-hawk. Like the vultures around a burial. </p><p>Except they didn’t have burials like that now. He’d mentioned it once before – he’d scrounged up the last dregs of a memory of a lecture on the return to nature, the cycle of oneness that Monk Gyatso had given him once, when one of the elders had died. Katara and Sokka had loaded him up on Water Tribe stories and food and customs until sometimes he felt like his robes would rub blue any minute now, waterlogged with a new history. That was how it worked, he knew: a story for a story, food for food. It had been a relief for a moment, to find a familiar language in an unfamiliar land.  </p><p>Aang breathed out and he could feel his breath hang in the air. He had only ever mentioned the burials once. </p><p>Something moved behind him, a slight shuffle on the stone floors, and Aang turned, tense. </p><p>“Oh,” he said, shoulders dropping. He couldn’t say why he was relieved, because he couldn’t say why he was tense to start with. “Chief Hakoda, hi.” Aang glanced out the window. The moon was high and silver in the sky. “Good… evening, sir?” </p><p>Chief Hakoda looked at him, bemused. Everyone looked different when they were half-asleep and almost soft with it, but Chief Hakoda reminded him of nothing more than a bear getting ready for its winter sleep. </p><p>“Aang,” he said. “It’s the middle of the night. Shouldn’t you be sleeping?” </p><p>Yes, was the obvious answer. Yes was what Chief Hakoda wanted to hear. He knew that. But sleeping in the Temple wasn’t supposed to be like this: cold and distant, echoes of the wind whipping through the building the only background noise. </p><p><i>I want to sleep</i>, he wanted to say. <i>I want to want to sleep</i>. But when he slept he remembered what the Temple was meant to be like, and then he would wake up, and his friends would be gone, and Monk Gyatso would be gone, and there would be another war on the horizon instead of long meditation and equally long boring games where he would twist Pai Sho tiles in the air until he forgot he had been playing a game to start with. </p><p>He had been quiet for too long, eyes focused on the stars when they should be on the ground. Chief Hakoda shuffled toward him, trying to muffle his footsteps. Two people awake at this time of night was more than enough. </p><p>“Yeah,” he said, sighing. His shoulders heaved with it. “I can’t sleep either.” </p><p>He sat down on the ground near Aang and patted the space next to him. He looked up; it was odd, feeling taller than Sokka and Katara’s dad, who had sounded like an immovable unstoppable giant in their stories and still seemed like one when they’d finally met. He sat, and the Chief’s face was above him again. </p><p>Hakoda leaned his head back against the cold wall. Aang didn’t; he'd learned at a young age that thick stone walls could be home during the day, and blocks of ice at night, heat leeching from them like sucking juice from fruit. Maybe that was why Chief Hakoda liked it. He hadn’t been home in a long time, either. Maybe it was just that his hair meant that he didn’t feel the cold like Aang could.</p><p>“You get used to some things, when you’re at sea,” he said to Aang, head rocking to the side to look at him. He huffed a laugh. “Now I don’t know how I ever slept without feeling a boat rocking on the water.” </p><p> Aang nodded, and pulled his feet in, sole to sole, wriggled his toes and felt them move against each other. He wrapped his hands around his ankles and looked down. Chief Hakoda didn’t say anything for a long minute, but Aang could still feel his eyes on the side of his head. </p><p>Aang didn’t say anything either. <i>Maybe if</i> and <i>what if</i> might live under his tongue, but stories of the Temples and the monks and his friends lived in his lungs, in his blood. He breathed them and their lives and their teachings every day. How do you explain that you don’t know how you are doing it? How do you explain that you don’t know how there is still air in your lungs, being breathed out into the cold night, becoming one with the rest of the world? The monks had taught him a lot, but they had died before they could teach him everything, and now there was nobody left. </p><p>He didn’t breathe out now, because he couldn’t, air chilling to ice as he slowly froze at the thought. </p><p>“Hey,” Hakoda said, gently. He sounded more awake now. “Aang, hey.” Aang didn’t turn to look at him until Hakoda said, “What were they like?” </p><p>“What?” he asked. </p><p>Hakoda gestured expansively at the room. The decaying Temple. “What were they like? Your friends.” </p><p>Aang blinked at him. “Oh,” he said, tightening his hands around his ankles. He turned his face back down toward the ground. “Sorry, but I didn’t know anyone here.” </p><p>He thought that would be the end of it, but Hakoda shook his head. “No,” he said, still gentle. “Your friends, from home. Your Temple.” </p><p>He said it so easily, <i>from home</i>. Like – like he could go visit them. Like they were just across the Earth Kingdom, or hidden away somewhere he couldn’t find them. He could take a ship, like the Water Tribe. Or somewhere there could be a little Temple, tucked away behind a cloud, and when he found it, his friends would be there, and the elders, and the toys and scrolls and music, and he would be home again. </p><p>But Aang had already been home, and the cloud and the Temple blew apart like the dust on the steps of the Temple, and the dust of their bones, and clogged up his throat like he was in the desert again, desperate for water, desperate to breathe easy. Air had never been a problem for him before.</p><p>He wanted to say: the little kids loved the flying bison. They would bury their hands in the fur up to their elbows, and try to wriggle in further and some of them were so small I thought they’d vanish into it. He wanted to say: nothing ever smells like the incense they burned, and they burned it all the time so now everything smells wrong, because it’s not there. He wanted to say: I didn’t pay enough attention, and now I don’t remember what they were singing when we cleaned the Temple, but I remember how it echoed through my ribs, hundreds of people singing. </p><p>He didn’t look up from the stone floor, steady and solid and real like they never could be again. Children wouldn’t run through here, and elders wouldn’t make them wash floors, or talk to them about the cycle, and the oneness of it all. </p><p>Hakoda put a big warm hand on his back. “It’s okay,” he said, rubbing his back. “You’re okay, Aang.” </p><p>“They were really nice,” he choked out, around the bone-dust in his mouth. “They were my family.” He clenched his hands tighter, nails digging into his skin, but all he could feel was the dryness of Monk Gyatso’s skull in his hands, the weight of it. You shouldn’t know that about a person, how much their life weighs in your hands. </p><p>Something wet dripped down his face, his chin, and splashed onto his hand. He wiped away at it, startled. </p><p>“Sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry, sir.” </p><p>“You don’t need to apologise,” Hakoda said. His hand moved from Aang’s back to his shoulder, and he pulled him in sideways to a rough hug. A heavy chin rested on his head. “It’s a hard thing to live with, losing people we love.” There was a terrible ache in his voice when he said it, and Aang blinked at it, feeling more tears spill down his face. </p><p>“They’re not lost,” he said, but his voice was wobbly. “Monk Gyatso explained it. He said– he said–” but he couldn’t get it out, and he didn’t think he could explain the sky burials again. </p><p>Hakoda’s arms were tight around him, grounding him in a way he had never needed nor wanted before. But he was held fast against the current of tears, the wind of grief that tore through him like he was the decaying Temple, lost and alone. </p><p>“I miss them,” he tried to say, but it was a hoarse whisper that even he couldn’t understand. Hakoda hummed, and it vibrated through him, a distant echo of the chorus of monks singing as they worked. </p><p>“I want to go home,” he said, slightly louder. </p><p>“I know,” said Hakoda, arms still around him, holding him fast to the world. Aang’s hands twisted in his parka. </p><p>“I want to go home,” he said again, but it broke halfway through, and he turned his face into Hakoda’s chest. </p><p>There was a hand pressed to the back of his head, curved around the blue tattoo. The woman who had done it for him was gone now, and so was her apprentice. Monk Gyatso had taken him when it was time, and he was gone, too, and they wouldn’t walk up and down the steps to the Temple again because Gyatso wanted to enjoy the moment and the air as it cooled, because he was gone, and Gyatso couldn’t walk anywhere again.</p><p>He thought about Gyatso, and his smile, and his patience; he thought about Gyatso, and that collection of bones, death in a space that was full of life. He was wheezing for air now, gasping to try to breathe in something that wasn’t death and decay. All the while, Hakoda sat with him. He took one of Aang’s hands and untangled it from his parka, set it flat over his chest. </p><p>“Aang, breathe,” he urged. “Feel how I breathe. In, and out. In, and out. That’s it,” he said, when Aang tried to copy it. “That’s it, good boy.” </p><p>He didn’t know how long it took him to breathe again, but they must have sat there for a very long time because he could see the faintest glimmer of pink dawn in the distance. </p><p>“Just keep breathing,” Hakoda said, patiently. “That’s all you have to do right now.” </p><p>He kept Aang’s hand on his chest, and Aang sat there with him, dawn reaching out toward them, and he thought about Gyatso, and the cycle of everything, and the oneness of the world, and he breathed.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>find me on <a href="https://twitter.com/quodthey">twitter</a></p></blockquote></div></div>
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